Quotes

"It is true Keynes said that in the long run we are all dead - but now Keynes is dead and we are in the long run", Consumption, Savings and the Multiplier (1986)

"To suppose all consumers to be dupes, and all merchants and manufacturers to be cheats, has the effect of authorizing them to be so, and of degrading all the working members of the community."

"Every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all."

"This democracy of consumers has the...great advantage of a perfect proportional system: there is no nullifying of the minorities' will by the majority, and every ballot carries its full weight. The result is a market democracy, which in its silent precision surpasses the most perfect political democracy."

"The process of the market economy is, so to speak, a plebiscite de tous les jours, where every monetary unit spent by the consumer represents a ballot, and where the producers are endeavoring by their advertising to give 'election publicity' to an infinite number of parties (i.e. goods)."

"[Interventionism] presupposed that bureaucracy knows better than the consumers what is good and useful...In other words, the government has the astonishing audacity to require of us that we should prefer its arbitrary list of priorities to our own."

"Freedom, immunity of the economic life from political infection, clean principles, and peace - these are the non-materialist achievements of the pure market economy."

"The ordinary man is not such a homo oeconomicus, just as he is neither hero nor saint. The motives that drive people toward economic success are as varied as the human soul itself."

"Imperialism is not only not an essential component of capitalism, but, quite apart from all the economic links in the chain of cause and effect, is a concomitant which is foreign to, and even opposed to, the capitalistic system."

"The government itself, by means of its laws, its tax system, and its economic and social policies, continuously and injudiciously weights the scale in favor of industrial concentration. This has nothing to do with the frequently overstated technical and organization advantages of scale."